People have to find their own way

At a meeting in Sydney and then drinks on a pub rooftop in the Rocks with my colleagues watching the sunset over the Opera House - and listening to the traffic and trains rumble over the Harbour Bridge just behind us.  

I got thinking about the reminder we had heard earlier in the day of the Cohen Brown 10 Elements of Good Leadership:

1. Vision

2. Goals

3. Plans

4. Actions

5. Results tracking

6. Follow up and feedback

7. Coaching

8. Resource Management

9. Motivation

10. Relationship Techniques

And the summary that Leaders have a vision, Managers follow a process.  Now I am not going to argue with Cohen Brown (CB) - the improvement in sales and revenue in so many organisations that have implemented CB speak for themselves.  The 10 Elements are so strong and obvious we forget them easily!

In the back of my mind though I was reflecting on something I had read earlier - which was an article about  Hans Monderman - the Dutch traffic engineer who was asked to resolve the problem of a high rate of accidents in a busy intersection in the Dutch town of Drachten.  He thought about it for a while and then decided to remove all rules, signs and lines from the intersection.  "Who has right of way? I don't care", he said.  "People have to find their own way, negotiate for themselves and use their own brains".  Accidents plummeted in the intersection and his approach became known globally in town planning management.

Monderman  recognized that increased control by the state actually reduced the  individual and collective responsibility of the citizens.

CB badly applied ignores this element of human nature - which is that people are essentially independent thinkers and don't like following a formula.  The art of the leader is to help people share a vision and then to help them work out how to implement it themselves.  
This particularly applies when your team is young and smart.

All you need to know about Leadership and Management in one blog post!

Ken Blanchard wrote the famous book The One Minute Manager.  He has since gone on to write many more.  
The most useful Ken Blanchard book to me was The One Minute Manager meets the Monkey - which he co wrote with a guy called William Oncken.  

I recommend you read this book if you are new to management or just need a refresher. You will need an hour or so to digest it.

Or you can use these notes from an interview we recently heard when Blanchard was asked to summarise his thoughts on leadership and management (not the same things - but I think you need to be a good leader to be a good manager).

Blanchard said there were only 4 things to remember:

1. Set down your goals and objectives (what you want to achieve with your team). and then tell your team. This is a top down process and must be done. You need to let your team know your vision, mission and strategy. You also need to clearly let them know what the deliverables are (some people call them targets or key performance indicators), and also what behaviours you will expect from your team.
2. Then ask you team to develop an implementation plan. This is a bottom up process and must also be done. You are asking your team to "tell me how you are going to do this". Once you and your team area happy with the plan - get into it!
3. Then - for your experienced staff - you support them, remove roadblocks and get out the way!
4. For your inexperienced staff - you watch and guide them and redirect them before they get into too much trouble. You need to make time to teach them. This is the real sign of a good leader - over time you will bring your inexperienced staff up to the level of your good operators and yourself!

Only 4 things to remember and you will become a better leader.